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Write plain text files

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Re: Write plain text files

#291

Post by JohnL4 »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #151
imgabe wrote: post #35

Another advantage to plain text files: source control. You can check your writing into git and get a history of all your edits. It’s something programmers take for granted, but it would be amazing if this got more widely adopted outside of tech. The number of files with names like “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” is truly staggering. “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Okay. Agree entirely. I love some of the collaborative nature of Microsoft Teams and CRDT editing Word/Excel, but I'm usually pretty remote. Text over a tenuous WAN connection is ideal. I work at a government agency and I was /just today/ getting them to review and approve Git and VS Code for our staff use - and pandoc. A couple years ago we never would have gotten open-source software approved. I wish I knew of an e…

I have long thought writing law is a LOT like writing code. When you actually look at modern laws, they're basically legal patch files.

Re: Write plain text files

#292

Post by zkldi »

0xad wrote: post #242
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the whole article loses all of its meaning. If you find yourself writing Python in Word something has gone so horribly wrong there is no saving you. Just use the good old file program and you'll see that in any coherent world we classify python, php, html, and js files as different from actual plain text files. This very much feels like you are trying to argue tea is same as plain water.

No. Open up a word document (.docx) in hex editor (head -80 foo.docx | xxd) and you'll see it's not a plain file on a binary level. Now do the same with any python, php, html, and js files and you'll see that they're plain files. That's the difference that Derek is talking about.

If I piped that .docx file into bas64, would it then be a "plain file"? It's ascii plaintext chars.

I don't think your argument holds any water.

Re: Write plain text files

#293

Post by _dain_ »

sgjohnson wrote: post #166
loudmax wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Report Final Final draft v3.docx" is in a proprietary format format controlled by a single company. The spec may be open in some sense, but it's far from a level playing field.

> is in a proprietary format format controlled by a single company. It's not proprietary by definition. A nightmare to implement? Yes. But definitely not proprietary.

It doesn't follow the published open spec so it is de facto proprietary.

Re: Write plain text files

#294

Post by berkes »

Same applies for bookkeeping. Though my .xls will probably outlive most applications, I'm certain that the csv version is readable decades from now. CSV is a poor format, so I'm using a plain text ledger [0] (specifically: the beancount[1] dialect).

I'm quite certain that no webbased SAAS accounting tool will be around in decades. But I'm certain my (git sourced) foo.ledger files are readable and parseable for ages. And if worst comes, they are human readable, so I could even just copy it over, or parse it, manually.

[0] https://plaintextaccounting.org/ [1] https://github.com/beancount/

FWIW: I chose the beancount dialect over the simpler hledger/ledger format because of the additional support for investments/currencies/assets.

Re: Write plain text files

#296

Post by mythz »

autoexec wrote: post #245
mythz wrote: post #142

For several years I was an avid notepad.exe + plain text files practitioner for capturing any note but have switched to using https://notable.app for capturing any adhoc notes. It has the same in spirit & benefits of maintaining plain-text .md files in a static directory but has all the niceties of rich markdown, embeds, attachments, search and metadata captured in .md frontmatter to organize and tag notes with categ…

notable seems a lot like zim. I see Notable has (or will have) a paid subscription plan, on-line features like sharing, cloud synchronization, and encryption, but I didn't see a privacy policy anywhere.

Privacy policy for what? it just writes static .md text files to your local folder.

The feature for built-in synchronization was proposed by its Author in 2019 [1], don't see any recent activity on when it will be available, it just says it will be opt-in via a paid subscription.

[1] https://github.com/notable/notable/issues/819

Re: Write plain text files

#297

Post by ho_schi »

imgabe wrote: post #35

Another advantage to plain text files: source control. You can check your writing into git and get a history of all your edits. It’s something programmers take for granted, but it would be amazing if this got more widely adopted outside of tech. The number of files with names like “Report Final Final draft v3.docx” is truly staggering. “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

git --everything-is-local

Which is the next thing. Git works just local and uses servers to sync. The purpose of servers is syncing and not depending on them. From this everything else comes, autonomous usage, speed, reliability, recovery.

Re: Write plain text files

#298

Post by mrpotato »

maleldil wrote: post #273
urlwolf wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget asciidoc. Coherent, has markup for things like video etc. It's a superior format to markdown, a pity it's so unknown

Why do you think it's superior to Markdown?

I was also interested in the answer to your question. Here's[1] why AsciiDoc thinks it's better than Markdown.

[1]https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/asciidoc-vs-mar...

Re: Write plain text files

#299

Post by harha »

Quite the irony that smartphones as the most successful incarnation of modern computers are the antithesis to this.

Folders are hidden, no default text editor, lock-ins everywhere you look.

Re: Write plain text files

#300

Post by sublimefire »

There is a reason we have many forms of distributing written ideas:

- use math functions in the document

- add visual sections for people to be able to quickly scan the document once printed

- use tables

- use pictures

- real time collaboration involving all of the above

This is great because you can choose something that fits your problem instead of being forced to type in plaintext.

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